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To Roast a Suckling Pig

A roast suckling pig seasoned with sage, bread crumbs, pepper, salt, and butter, cooked on a spit.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,388 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

To Roast a Suckling Pig

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the pig

  1. Mix sage, bread crumbs, pepper, and salt in a bowl.

  2. Stuff the mixture into the pig's belly and sew it up.

Roast

  1. Spit the pig and place it over a brisk fire.

  2. Dredge the pig with flour but do not baste it.

  3. Within 15 minutes of being done, wipe off the flour with a clean cloth.

  4. Tie butter in a piece of cloth and rub it over the pig.

  5. Remove the head while cooking, take out the brains, and chop them.

  6. Mix the chopped brains with the pig's gravy and a little melted butter.

  7. Cut the pig down the back and belly without removing it from the spit.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sage + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sage + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Sage + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,312 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Suckling pig
Provides the main meat, which cooks through over the fire and becomes tender.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices from the stuffing, keeping it moist and lightly bound.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the skin and helps it brown and crisp.
Flour (in the method)
Forms a dry coating that helps the skin brown and crisp during roasting.

The step that matters

Wiping off the flour within 15 minutes of being done. Flour left on the skin can burn or taste pasty, while wiping it off too early leaves the coating unset. Timing the wipe near the end of roasting lets the skin brown and crisp cleanly.

Swap the sage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, pepper, butter):

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Sagethe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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